Gulu Mirchandani made Onida, India's pride

He was born on 12 June 1943 to Padma and Lalchand Ghemal Mirchandani. Gulu studied engineering at BITS Pilani, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1981 along with Sonu Mirchandani (his brother) and Vijay J Mansukhani, Gulu promoted MIRC Electronics to make televisions under the Onida brand.

Establishing the company was a struggle: Rajiv Gandhi had opened up imports so that we could all watch the 1982 Asian Games, and Jumbo's Manu Chabbria seized the opportunity to flood India with Sony exports from Dubai. It was not until the mid 1980s that the fledgling company's fortunes could turn. The catalyst was a controversial advertising campaign with the tagline, 'Neighbor's Envy, Owner's Pride'.

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The face of the devil became the face of the company and sales boomed. The rest as they say is history. Onida gained ground not only over Indian players such as Videocon and BPL but equally won turf battles against the global giants such as Sony.


The next turning point was a family separation in the mid 1990s, with Sonu taking over the Delhi factory, and Gulu the Mumbai operations and the Onida brand. There was a hiatus for a year or so, but once the reorganization was over, Onida hit the streets running. New products tumbled off the designers' drawing boards, ("We have very strong R&D of our own. We're constantly increasing investment here. We started out with five R&D people. We have 75 today") not just in consumer electronics but also consumer durables, including washing machines with fuzzy logic.


Source : Moneycontrol
 
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